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Release
date:
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Kerala: February 20, 2020
Delhi: February 28, 2020
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Director:
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Anwar
Rasheed
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Cast:
Language:
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Fahadh
Faasil, Sreenath Bhasi, Soubin
Shahir, Nazriya Nazim Fahadh, Gautham Vasudev Menon,
Chemban Vinod Jose, Dileesh Pothan, Vinayakan, Arjun Ashokan
Malayalam
with some Tamil and English
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How
can a film descend so dramatically from being profound, poignant and quirky
pre-interval to shallow, stretched,
sterile and repetitive thereafter?
Director
Anwar Rasheed’s Trance takes off brilliantly. Fahadh Faasil
plays Viju Prasad, an aspiring motivational speaker talent-spotted
by a large corporation and transformed
into a religious preacher. The early scenes of Viju in Kanyakumari trying to
establish himself in his profession even while struggling to financially and emotionally support his mentally unwell brother
are moving. They are also an uncommon blend of quiet yet wacko.
Fahadh
dazzles throughout the film, but in the
first half he gets to sink his ravenous actor’s teeth into a meaty script.
Those manic eyes camouflaged from the world reveal themselves only when he is
alone. In his avatar as a pastor, he explodes on stage with a
matching manic energy. Those scenes in front of a mirror teeter on the edge
of resembling his character Shammi’s signature scene in Kumbalangi Nights, but Fahadh has a distinctive touch that turns
them into a tribute and a nod to that iconic 2019 film instead of a copy.
The first half of Trance is also enriched by
the presence of Sreenath Bhasi in a brief role as Viju’s troubled sibling
Kunjan. Bhasi is less celebrated than Fahadh in Mollywood but he is, without
question, one of this industry’s most gifted actors. In the little time he gets
on screen, he makes Kunjan an understated mix of fearful and fearsome, fond of
Viju yet possibly resentful towards him because he is conscious – without
ever having been taunted – of being a burden on his protective,
devoted elder brother. What lies beneath that boyish facade one cannot quite
tell, and Bhasi makes the character intriguing.
It is heartening that for a second year in a row, Malayalam
cinema has made the effort to dwell on mental health, a theme that Indian
cinema at large neglects.
The time spent on Viju and Kunjan’s relationship is the best
written, best directed part of Trance.
The other is the electric interaction between Viju and a
journalist called Mathews (Soubin Shahir) in a TV studio. The latter is in top
form as a man pretending to be what he is not, quite like Viju.
Vincent Vadakkan’s screenplay excels too in its initial
depictions of the machinations and manipulations at play when a wolf in
preacher’s clothing stands on a stage working a frenzied mob of the faithful.
Those passages are enthralling and oftentimes hilarious. After the interval though, similar scenes are
repeatedly rolled out with little that is new being added to what has already
been shown and said. By then the downhill slide is well and truly underway.
This
is when it becomes noticeable that apart from Viju and Kunjan, there is
absolutely no detailing in the writing of the rest of the players in Trance.
Among others, Gautham Vasudev Menon, Chemban Vinod Jose and Dileesh Pothan are victims of one-note
characterisation. The first two are evil representatives of a corporate giant,
the latter is their amoral lackey – that is it, there is nothing more to them.
The
low point of Trance though
is the token female presence provided by Nazriya Nazim Fahadh.
(Some readers may deem certain parts of this
paragraph spoilers) Nazriya’s decidedly marginal character, Esther Lopez, is brought
in by the villains to be Viju a.k.a. Pastor Joshua Carlton’s secretary, to get
close to him and unearth certain information about him. Obviously a regular
professional would not serve their purpose. The recruiter is asked to shed light on Esther’s murky
background, and she offers this cryptic explanation: “the usual –
boyfriend scene.” OMG, she had a – you do not want your children hearing this –
b.o.y.f.r.i.e.n.d.? When the lady explains herself, we learn that by “boyfriend
scene” she meant that Esther fell in love, was ditched, took to alcohol and
drugs, and perhaps has a child. (Spoiler
alert ends)
The film is straining at this point to appear cool, but
unwittingly betrays the writer’s biases – biases, it must be said, that are not
unknown to commercial Malayalam cinema. This is a world in which sweet, young, innocent-looking women look sad immediately
after sex. Because to a conservative mind, sorrow is a woman’s
natural reaction to sex, even when consensual? Insert eye-roll emoji here.
There is nothing to indicate that Esther Lopez is an assumed name, so it must also be asked why she could not
have been a Marykutty Jose, Parvathy Rajendran or Shazia Mohammed. Was
this a sub-conscious choice? What point was being conveyed by writing this
alcohol-swilling drug addict as a woman with a decidedly Anglo-Indian sounding name who
lives in Mumbai and has a Hindi line from a song playing in the
background in her introductory scene?
Boss,
all the slickness in the world – production design: Ajayan Chalissery, music:
Sushin Shyam and Jackson Vijayan, camerawork: Amal Neerad – cannot camouflage
your innate prejudice and traditionalism or the fact that in the second half
you have allowed style to trump depth.
There
is so much promise in the first half of Trance in
its depiction of religion as an opioid. The second
half though, completely fails to take that substantial beginning forward. A
sub-plot involving Vinayakan has potential but its soul is overshadowed by
production polish.
More important, if the goal was to probe corruption
in religion and the exploitation of gullible devotees, then by zeroing
in on a niche Christian group rather than mainstream Christianity or for that matter
Hinduism or Islam, Rasheed and Vadakkan have taken a comparatively less risky
path. As far as the writing challenge goes,
ridiculing an overtly madcap religious sect that flails its arms
about while screaming “Hallelujah” and “Praise the Lord” is relatively easy. Investigating such a group, since it
is off-mainstream, is also politically
safer than delving into the mind games, questionable finances and
regressiveness of a more widely recognised sect from any one of the major
world religions with a presence in Kerala.
Even
within the space occupied by smaller, corporatised churches, Trance ends up being superficial. For a
more insightful take on such organisations, check out the admittedly soapish
but nevertheless insightful American series Greenleaf on Netflix.
In
the end, in any case Trance seems less pre-occupied with depth
and more concerned about impressing the audience with its cool camera angles.
When a man kills another, I was too distracted by the blood drops falling in
slow motion into a transparent drink
to be disturbed by his motivations. And the film’s
epilogue-like closing in which a gallant dude rescues a woman who was making no
effort to rescue herself (because what else can a paavam girl do but wait
around for Lochinvar on his white horse?) seems to have been thrown in only as
an excuse to take the story to foreign lands.
I
cannot believe that Trance was made by the director of one of
my all-time favourite Malayalam films, Ustad Hotel. Next time cook that script some more, please.
Rating (out
of 5 stars): 2.5
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CBFC Rating (India):
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UA
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Running time:
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170 minutes
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This review has also been published on Firstpost:
